12 Immigrants Behind Some of Silicon Valley’s Biggest Companies

Tech leaders in Silicon Valley know from personal experience how damaging Donald Trump’s immigration ban is for the United States, because many of them were born somewhere else themselves. A 2016 study found that 51 percent of billion-dollar U.S. tech start-ups were founded by immigrants. Here are 11 chief executives and founders of tech companies who immigrated to the United States.

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Sundar Pichai

Sundar Pichai, Google’s C.E.O., was born in Chennai, India, immigrating to the U.S. to attend Stanford in 1993.

Elon Musk

Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla, was born and raised in South Africa. He obtained Canadian citizenship in 1989 and briefly attended college at Queen's University in Ontario. He transferred to University of Pennsylvania, in part because such a move would allow him to get an H-1B visa and stay in the U.S. after college.

Adam Neumann

Adam Neumann, raised on an Israeli kibbutz, moved to the U.S. in 2001, after briefly serving in the Israeli army as a navy doctor. Now he’s the chief executive of the $16.9 billion New York-based WeWork, which sublets space to individuals and companies.

Peter Thiel

Trump supporter Peter Thiel, who has expressed support for the president’s executive action restricting immigration from several predominantly Muslim countries, is an immigrant himself. Before he co-founded PayPal and made one of the earliest large investments in Facebook, Thiel moved with his family from Germany, where he was born. In 2011, he also became a citizen of New Zealand, adding a third passport to his growing collection.